10:19AM “They talk over the dock, and wirelessly over Bluetooth. Things like playing and pausing music, getting artwork — or you can build your own custom protocols.”
10:19AM “Now here’s a class that we think will be really interesting — medical devices.” Scott’s showing off a blood pressure reader that interfaces with the iPhone — wild.
10:18AM “Here’s an example — an FM transmitter. With 3.0, the dev can build a custom app that pairs up with it, and automatically finds the right station and tunes it in.”
10:18AM “With 3.0, we’re going to enable accessory developers to build custom apps that talk directly to that hardware.”

No solid connection specification has been published yet. We’re excited about the prospect of developing our own accessory hardware, but we wonder what sort of hoops you’ll have to jump through. Apple doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to approvals. Just this week they denied MSA Remote client App Store entry; it’s a multitouch client that uses the standard TUIO protocol. Prepare for similar roadblocks in the future.

Like [fyrebug] said, nice to se it in the official app… I bought the first gen iTouch just because of the convenient SDK and the great hardware. I quickly realized Apples ill reign would hiner me in doing soft~ for this hard~. It’s like I paid to lend it, and now I can lease apps through som DRMish nonsense. However this kind of obedience is counterindicated by the manual on my brain.

So: Jailbreak (or someting to that effect. Google it).
And then: You can buspower an Arduino mini on a third-party dock-con. and instantly get lots of analog and digital GPIOs. Some pins even do serial TX and RX.

If it’s just for the blood pressure and hartrate, the Arduino is HW enough, you don’t need no strongARM for that.

They need to add a lot more to the SDK when they plan to make it jailbreak-safe :)
I wonder if they can’t make a cheaper subscription when you don’t need all features. Or a more expensive one with 3.0-exclusive features xD.

I’ve been using my Touch 1G as a pda, once I realized 1) that the contact/calendar tools were as nice what I was using on my Palm, 2) the Touch was ***way*** more rugged than the palms/handsprings i’ve owned.

the missing piece was a portable keyboard like the stowaway. i haven’t yet seen whether that capability is possible with the new sdk, but I can dream.

wow… let’s add features that should have already been there. good job apple! maybe in v3 of your software, you’ll enable people to send picture messages like every other phone out there? ever since apple switched from motorola cpu’s to intel, it’s been a steady downhill slide for apple in my opinion.

heres hoping for bluetooth keyboards… it would actually make a decent portable computing device, you can get a full 80 width terminal on a 480 pixel screen. 5 pixels wide for m/w, but ‘@’ would be just a blob.